SUNDAY NATION July 5, 2015 Business 39 INNOVATION | We started researching on how leftovers could be disposed of without involving garbage collectors Your kitchen waste can cook for you! D Youths develop innovative ways of turning kitchen waste into cooking gas BY VINCENT ACHUKA @vincentachuka vachuka@ke.nationmedia.com ealing with kitchen waste is one of the many problems the majority of urban households constantly grapple with. Unlike the rural areas — where waste from the kitchen can be turned into manure or animal feeds — in the towns and cities it is an extra expense for families and an addition to refuse disposal problems faced by urban authorities. But a youth group in Mutu-ini Ward, Dagoretti South Constituency in Nairobi, has come up with an innovation that could dramatically change the way kitchen waste is disposed of. Their bio-waste treatment plant converts kitchen waste into cooking gas. The innovation, the group says, can save the environment from being choked by refuse, besides reducing the cost of energy and felling of trees for charcoal. “Inadequate management of If a family produces 5kg of kitchen waste a week, it gets 2.5kg gas,” John Kibe waste has several adverse consequences. It not only leads to pollution but also to breeding of vermin and pests such as flies, cockroaches, mosquitoes, rats and other disease-bearing vectors,” says group chairman Zacheus Ndung’u at their workshop in Kirigu village. “Also, it emits an unpleasant odour and methane, which is a major greenhouse gas contributing to global warming,” he says. Their plant works in a similar way to a biogas treatment unit but uses kitchen waste – including leftovers – instead of animal dung. Ndung’u says this is revolutionary since most people living in urban areas do not keep animals. In addition, he says, the innovation could reduce the current high dependence on kerosene to cook. A joint report last year by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the Society of International Development, East Africa, said 68 per cent of Kenyans use kerosene for cooking and lighting. The main components of the in- novative plant are two cylindrical drums, one of which has a slightly larger diameter. The one with the smaller diameter is hollow at the bottom and is placed inside the larger one. It is called a gas collector; the larger one is the digester. The digester is filled with clean water a third of its height. “The gas collector’s top side has to be air tight with two openings, and mixing the ash with water, you create potassium hydroxide,” says Ndung’u. Introduction of potassium hy- droxide digests the decomposed waste, turning it into water while producing methane gas, which is flammable. It takes about a month for a newly installed plant to produce sufficient gas for cooking. Once it reaches this level, the gas replenishes itself every 24 hours if used to cook for about four hours a day. And compared with biogas plants that use animal dung, the group says their bio digester’s output is more efficient. “Substances contained in animal dung have already been digested in the animals’ stomach, meaning they have less carbohydrates, 2.5kg PHOTOS | ANTHONY OMUYA Above: James Wainaina, Zacheus Ndung’u, John Kibe and Samuel Ndichu at their workshop in Kirigu Village, Mutu-ini Ward, Dagoretti South Constituency. Left: The group poses with their innovation on Friday. one for feeding the plant and the other to act as the gas outlet. The feeder has a pipe running all the way to the digester,” says John Kibe, one of the group members, while illustrating the use of the plant. “All organic waste from the kitchen is usable. At a production rate of 50 per cent, the family gets half the amount of waste fed to the plant as gas. For example, if a family produces 5kg of kitchen waste a week, it gets 2.5kg gas,” he explains. Two weeks Once the waste is added to the plant, it undergoes hydrolysis, a process in which bacteria decompose the waste, just like in external conditions. This process takes about two weeks. “Bacteria decompose long chains of complex carbohydrates, proteins and lipides into small chains. For Parliament set to discuss rules to tame Safaricom’s dominance BY VINCENT ACHUKA @vincentachuka vachuka@ke.nationmedia.com Mobile telephony market leader Safari- com may be forced to split its businesses, subject interconnectivity fees charged to other providers to government approvals and share some of its platforms including its facilities and MPesa platform if proposals by the government are approved by Parliament. The 14 rules seen by the Sunday Na- tion promise to open a new battle front between Safaricom and Airtel who have been perennial rivals in the lucrative communications business. Safaricom’s marketing budgets will be subject to approval by government and the company will no longer be able to react to competition by immediate adjustment of its pricing, which could affect its profits. Information Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i will this week make these proposals in an effort to declare the communications giant dominant and give a chance for the other players to grow. The Kenya Information and Commu- nications (Fair Competition and Equality Treatment) Regulations 2015 would give the government power to determine the suitability of market segments to services provided by communications products. Among the considerations that the gov- ernment intends to use in order to declare Safaricom a dominant player are its huge profits and the nature of its products that are seen to be creating barriers to other players. “The criteria for determining a licensee as dominant may among other factors include the ability of the licensee to maintain or erect barriers to entry into the market, including, by means of control of essential facilities, access to superior technology, privileged access to resources or capital markets or superior buying or negotiating position and its ability to earn supernormal profits,” says a draft of the regulations seen by the Sunday Nation. Industry statistics show that Safaricom controls all segments of the market — voice (75.6 per cent), SMS (93 per cent), mobile data (70 per cent) and mobile money (66.7 per cent). Of the three players in the market, Safa- ricom is the only one that has consistently reported profits. During its full year result for 2014 released in March, the company reported Sh31.9 billion. Both Airtel and Orange are yet to report profits while YU exited the market last year after failing to break even. Airtel, which controls 16 per cent of the market, has been pushing to have Safaricom declared dominant. “A dominant licensee shall maintain separate books of account for each service as may be prescribed by the Authority from time to time and shall not cross-subsidise the prices for any service it offers in the market,” says the proposal. example, polysaccharides are converted to monosaccharides, while proteins are split into peptides and amino acids,” says Ndung’u. “Potassium hydroxide is also in- troduced to the digester. Because of its acidity, it turns an airtight environment anaerobic, which is essential for methane-producing micro-organisms to grow,” he explains. Potassium hydroxide can be purchased from chemical shops and laboratories but, instead of buying it, the group creates its own through burning of dried ripe banana peelings and mixing the ash with clean water. The group says this not only re- duces the overall cost of running the bio digester but also makes use of the peelings, which would otherwise have been thrown away. “Banana peelings are rich in potassium. By burning them Amount of gas that is produced from 5kg of kitchen waste proteins and amino acids. But kitchen waste has not been eaten yet, meaning its substrates are in their original quantities, which leads to more gas,” says Samuel Ndichu, a group member. The group, which is also involved in garbage collection and welding, says it got its motivation from the amount of kitchen waste that was part of the garbage they were collecting every week. “We realised that about 90 per cent of garbage from people’s houses is kitchen waste so we started researching on how it could be disposed of without involving garbage collectors,” says Mr Ndichu. The group has so far installed a dozen of their plants in the neighbourhood and hopes to get an investor for mass production and installation to ensure as many people as possible afford the technology. All eyes on Njoroge ahead of policy meet CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35 A number of analysts have projected a further aggressive increase of the Central Bank rate (CBR) by as much as 1.5 percentage points. On June 9, the local currency firmed up a bit to the dollar when the MPC chaired by deputy governor Haron Sirima raised the rate 1.5 percentage points to 10 per cent, the first time in two years. Analysts had projected a rate increase of about 0.5 percentage points to 9 pc. “To date, T-bill yields have not risen sufficiently to reflect the higher CBR. This will need to change in order to support the shilling. Given the upside risks to inflation from strong growth – we see inflation above 9 per cent before year-end – we forecast at least another 50bps (0.5 per cent) hike in the CBR to 10.5 per cent in the fourth quarter, 2015,” said Razia Khan, chief Africa economist at Standard Chartered Bank. MPC meetings are held every two months but CBK reverted to the monthly schedule on June 9 to stop further shilling depreciation. “While this has not yet had a pronounced impact on rate setting in the rest of the economy and market interest rates are yet to adjust fully to the CBK hike, both shilling volatility and subsequent interest-rate tightening appear to have influenced expectations,” Ms Khan said. Since January, the shilling has come under stiff pressure from the strong dollar, rising demand for the greenback from importers, and declining forex inflows and fast rising imports.